


Right to the Heart

by Checkerbox



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, and also is shy, breaking the ice, inquisitor idly thinks about killing people a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 22:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Checkerbox/pseuds/Checkerbox
Summary: It was hardly a calf-eyed love at first sight, but the laughter was something.





	Right to the Heart

Dorian’s first impression of Inquisitor Trevelyan had been chipped teeth gleaming in delight at an oncoming battle, barking laughter as he killed and maimed. Then, soon after, going out alone to sacrifice himself to give their camp full of refugees time to escape.

Trevelyan had tried to walk that last part back on their frigidly cold journey to Skyhold, but it was hard to dispel an introduction like that so easily.

He wasn’t sure what to make of a man who was so comfortable covered in blood, but also had so little regard for himself that he would make that kind of play. And so, Dorian had kept his distance, initially. Had let himself linger in the background to observe.

And somehow, distressingly, the background had been where he stayed, where Trevelyan was concerned.

They had spoken, of course. Over the weeks that they had spent in Skyhold both before and after his appointment as Inquisitor, it was only natural they run into each other every now and then. Exchange a word or two of greeting. But outside of that? Very little. And while being out of the spotlight of his attention was perhaps safer, for Dorian it was most certainly not comfortable.

Trevelyan did not seem to be the kind of man who was easily shackled by ideas of what was proper, including where people came from. Among his personal circle he had mages, elves, a dwarf, a spirit—even a bloody _Qunari_. And the man seemed perfectly capable of conversing with them all just fine. Even the sterner companions, the Seeker and the Warden, were able to net some degree of warmth from him.

Just not Dorian.

And he didn’t want to think it was because he was from Tevinter, but he was having trouble coming up with other reasons why.

It wasn’t as though Trevelyan had shown any particular disdain for him. Even now, Dorian was accompanying him on their crew’s trip to Crestwood at his behest. He was just…calm. Polite. Maddeningly distant and brief, like he was holding something back. And that didn’t feel right—not for working with him long-term, at any rate.

“You didn’t know him back in Haven, Sparkler,” Varric was telling him. Up in the front he could hear Trevelyan egging on Iron Bull and Sera as they needled at Cassandra. “He might seem brazen as they come in battle but he’s pretty skittish around people. At least, people he has to spend more than an hour around.”

Cassandra was clearly trying to remain stalwart and stoic, but her exasperation was coming through quite audibly even from so far away. Trevelyan was saying something to her, too low to make out, but whatever it was it resulted in him getting a light punch to the shoulder. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

Varric balanced Bianca on his shoulder, following his gaze. “Trust me, those first few weeks he didn’t talk to _anyone_ unless they spoke to him first. Which usually involved having to hunt him down.”

Bull’s laughter reverberated back to them, Trevelyan having apparently attempted to punch _his _shoulder and hurting his fist in the process. Dorian shot Varric a look.

“…Just give him some time to get used to you. He’ll come around.”

With all the personal growth that he’d been forced to endure since running off on his own, traveling by foot was one indignity Dorian had been hoping to leave behind after joining up with the Inquisition. Evidently not. He’d been told that they were still working on replacing their mounts for longer distance travel after losing Haven, but a part of him suspected it was more because the Inquisitor liked being able to stop and pick elfroot whenever he saw it.

There was a nice view here, at least—left to his own devices he’d situated himself on a large, smooth boulder near a ledge, just high enough to see the valley, and the rumbling hills that divided it. He would never admit it, but there was something peaceful about watching the tall grass bend in the wind in shifting waves on the outskirts of their camp.

It didn’t take long for the peace to be disrupted, however.

“Sera!” he heard from below. It only took a moment for him to realize that was Trevelyan’s voice, quick and excited. “Sera, you have to come see—Oh.”

His head poked up from the ledge, and he cut off rather abruptly when he saw that the only one there was Dorian.

It was funny—this was the same man who had personally run out to go pick fights with a dragon armed with only some arrows and knives, and yet right at that moment his face greatly resembled a fennec being faced down by a charging druffalo.

Dorian saw his frozen trepidation and responded with a fluttering wave of his fingers and a calm, half-lidded smile.

Trevelyan_ blushed_.

“I, uh—” He looked around, blinking. “Did—did you see where Sera went?”

Even as he was re-evaluating his impression of Trevelyan for a third time, Dorian remained impassive. It was easy enough to do. “Sera? I believe she went off with your Seeker to go ‘punch bears’, or something of that nature. Why? Did you need her for something?”

“Not…need.” His voice slipped into what might have seemed an embarrassed mumble were his face not still upright and unblinkingly aimed Dorian’s way. “I—I was hoping to show her…a thing…”

It was starting to become clearer what Varric was talking about. It just didn’t seem real that a man with such sharp teeth could be shy. “Seeing as how she is gone for the foreseeable future, perhaps you could show me instead. I’m certainly not busy.”

“Well it—I don’t know as though you’d find it as fun.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I am all about the ‘fun’.”

He saw the jumpiness start to slowly ebb out of Trevelyan’s face, a slow and soft smirk taking over his expression. “Not Sera’s kind of fun.”

Dorian lifted a brow. “Now, how would you know that?”

“From observing you.”

“Does it not occur to you that you might learn more by talking to me instead?”

Trevelyan narrowed his eyes at him, voice dropping a little. “…You’re trying to get at something, aren’t you?” Then, suddenly, he broke into one of his broad, maniac grins, arching eyebrows and all. “You can be direct, Dorian. I have no feelings to hurt and no sensibilities to offend.”

Varric’s advice came to mind. To give the man space to get used to his presence—let him approach on his own time. There were so many dangers in pushing too quickly, in getting off on the wrong foot with the man who led the Inquisition, especially if he was not, as it seemed, a “people person”. Dorian was, after all, an outsider in every sense of the word. It would be much smarter to let his deeds do the talking. Be the quiet contributor until he’d been accepted as a friend and ally.

Well.

To the void with that. Dorian sat up and folded his arms. “All right. You’ve been very standoffish towards me, Inquisitor. I would like to address that.”

Trevelyan looked up at him curiously then, resting his gloved fingers on the ledge. “Standoffish? …What an odd way to phrase it. As though it’s something I do on purpose. --In reality I spend a great deal of my day _not _talking to people, Dorian. You have hardly been singled out.”

He wondered if he should be offended at being equated to all the scouts and minor contributors silently going about their business in Skyhold. “Among the people you have _personally_ accompanying you places, I have. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that you acknowledge my usefulness in inviting me, but you must understand it makes the silence more noticeable.”

“Ah.” Instead of attempting to deny it further, the response then was softer, more considered. “I just don’t know you that well.”

“Outside of my being a ‘mage from Tevinter’, you mean?”

The smile returned, though tamer. “That doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Is that what you’re worried about? Because you needn’t.”

“’Worried’ might be exaggerating it a little. It’s not like I stay up at night wondering why I don’t get invited to sit at the popular kids’ table. I simply…would like for us to be better acquainted.”

When an easy response didn’t immediately come, Dorian stood, walking over to the ledge and sitting down near Trevelyan, legs hanging over the side.

“We _are _going to be saving the world together,” he added, after a moment.

Trevelyan’s eyes fixed on him the way a housecat might look at a stranger in its home, before he smoothly and quickly hoisted himself up on the rock face to sit next to him. The movement was done so easily that despite his muscle he appeared almost weightless, legs idly swinging as he settled. “That remains to be seen.”

“Oh?”

“You could very well have your head crushed by a falling boulder before we get to that part.”

There was no threat in his tone. Not like the harbor masters who implied they’d like to see him fall down some stairs, or the servants who suggested the world would be better off if he ‘cut himself shaving’. “That would be a tragic and anticlimactic waste of my perfectly sculpted facial features.”

That made him laugh.

Dorian had never actually heard him laugh outside of battle before, and was stunned by how different it was. Not sharp and loud but soft and boyish, the slightest hint of teeth as he pressed the knuckle of his index finger to his mouth in a lame attempt to smother it. Underneath the chuckling Trevelyan eventually returned, “You’re right, that would be.”

“So we’re in agreement, then?” Dorian allowed himself a smile. The laughter was proving to be somewhat contagious, it seemed. “No crushing my head in the foreseeable future?”

Trevelyan said, through another stifled snort, “I didn’t say _I _was going to crush your head with a boulder. If I was going to kill you, I’d do it with much more finesse than that.” He poked Dorian just slightly left of his sternum. “Like an arrow, right to the heart. I’m a very good shot. Wouldn’t have to ruin your perfect face at all.”

It seemed he would still have to wrestle over whether this was some very well veiled spite or just tactlessness. But as much as it bemused him, it amused him too, and he said without thinking, “If this is your way of relating to new people, I can see why you don’t do it often.”

Trevelyan’s expression grew cautious again, and Dorian suddenly realized with a start that he was not the only one who was worried about making a good first impression.

“If _I_ was going to kill _you_,” he said finally, darkly, feeling his lips curl, “I would use lightning magic. Perhaps in a handshake.” Trevelyan blinked at him as Dorian took his hand, shaking it as though in demonstration and then trailing his fingers lightly down his arm to his chest. “The pulse would go through here, riding your nerves, until it reached your center. At which point it would interrupt your heartbeat and make you fall, dead. Neat, elegant, and no blood required.”

He was greeted with a look that could have been astonishment at his brazenness or…wonder.

“Hypothetically, of course,” he added. “I quite like the world not being torn apart by rifts and psychotic madmen, you know. And you seem a decent sort.”

“…Decent? I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever called me that.” Trevelyan leaned forward a little, some of his neatly tucked back bangs falling free. “Well, either you are a decent man yourself, or you’re currently doing a good job of deceiving me. Personally, I don’t peg you for being a particularly skilled liar.”

“Oh!” Dorian made a show of putting a hand to his chest. “I make an overture of friendship and he wounds me!”

More of that soft laughter, the drawing in of his shoulders as though it was something to suppress and hide. Trevelyan’s brows furrowing even as his grin broadened. “I’m not in the habit of making friends. And wounding is so much more fun.”

His face looked somewhat like it had when they were talking right after Haven, when he’d just gotten through insisting that he had thrown himself in the path of Corypheus and his dragon out of pure spite, and not out of any desire to protect a camp full of people who worshipped him.

Heavy metal footsteps clanked over the ground behind them right as Dorian opened his mouth to speak again.

“Hey!” All tension in Trevelyan’s features relaxed as he turned to see the loud-mouthed elf and the Seeker approaching. “There you two are. And don’t you look the picture of loveliness, Cassandra.”

There was still blood on Cassandra from battle, armor just a bit tousled in its connecting parts, patchwork clothing just barely visible underneath. Her hair was windswept—it had been a while since she cut it last—and plastered over her forehead. She rolled her eyes, snorting a little. “Now is not the time for your sarcasm.”

Amusingly enough, Dorian could tell from the look on Trevelyan’s face that it wasn’t.

She straightened up, putting a hand on her hip. “The others have arrived at our camp. I think it prudent to discuss strategy for when we get to the town of Crestwood. The undead will be more in force there, as well as the banditry. Scout Charter has information on the area to share.”

Sera piped up from behind her, “Vivvy’s got her silk panties in a twist about you being there for it. Since you’re the boss now or whatever.”

Trevelyan sighed, moving to stand up from the ledge. “Well, if _Vivienne_ thinks it’s important…” Funnily enough, there was a smidgen more fear in his voice when he said that than their discussion of killing each other just a moment ago. After he’d gotten to his feet he looked down at Dorian, cocking a brow. “Are you coming?”

Dorian leaned back, letting his head loll to the side. “Oh no. If I ran every time an Orlesian snapped her fingers, I could hardly call myself Tevinter.”

“I wouldn’t linger too long.” Cassandra looked the both of them over and then gave a short sniff in the general direction of the air around them. “There is a storm on the horizon.”

Trevelyan’s eyes gleamed in Dorian’s direction as he started to follow the two of them back. “A lightning storm, do you think?”

He smirked in return, but said nothing.

For a short time he watched them walk, saw Trevelyan chattering with Sera, glancing back his way once or twice. Then Dorian relaxed and turned his gaze to the clouds rolling in.

The ensuing rain was something he could have done without. But, all around, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

**Author's Note:**

> At this point in time I have maybe 15 different WIPs for Dragon Age (well, for this couple, let’s face it). I will probably not finish the bulk of them but some of them stick around in my head long enough to complete.
> 
> I was originally going to make a shorts collection to put all these little one-shots that don’t fit into a large story should they get finished (it’s what I’ve done in the past), but I think instead I’m just going to make them their own pieces. It’s different if they’re all, say, for the same AU or something, but I feel like shoving them alongside a bunch of other works they don’t necessarily connect to reduces them a little. Plus, being an open collection it by necessity never gets completed even when I’ve moved on, and that’s a little sad to me.


End file.
